Sunday Blog 158 – 10th November 2024

For those of you who’ve been following along, I finished up my five weeks of globetrotting with a two-week yoga retreat in Rishikesh, India. Last weekend, from midnight Friday through to ten pm Sunday night, I was travelling back home. The interwebs were not consistent and sometimes when the internet was available, I was too exhausted to surf it. So here is the Sunday blog from last week, at last.

“There’s the same number of beads on a mala as on a rosary,” I said confidently to fellow retreat attendees. There’s not. There are 59 rosary beads and 108 mala beads. Just shows how rusty my Catholicism is. But essentially both a mala and rosary beads help keep track of how many prayers or mantras you have already said, and how many to come.

During this Indian yoga retreat, I clambered around Hindu temples and watched (even participated in) fire ceremonies, visited yoga ashrams, lit candles and rang bells, let memories from my profoundly Catholic childhood resurface. Hanuman depicted in a giant statue put me in mind of the portraits of Jesus with his exposed heart. Or is that just me?

Memories from my long-abandoned faith which bubbled up, but in a good way. It was inspiring and comforting. As we passed the thousands of shops selling malas, I reminisced about the plaster Pilgrim Statue of Mary that perambulated around our parish in my early years. On loan to a household for a week, it was meant to encourage the family (and any unsuspecting guests) to say the rosary each night. Not just a decade of Hail Marys interspersed with one Our Father, repeated on a loop five times. But also a long litany of trimmings at the end of all that, in call and response fashion. “Holy Mary, mother of mothers, pray for us.” There was a little booklet with the many different ways you could address Mary. It was nestled in the bed that Mary’s statue came in.

“The rosary was but trimmings to the trimmings we would say,” our Irish grandfather had famously said. Not to me, but to his children who in turn recounted the saying to us. He was going to be a priest in Ireland but left for political reasons and came to Australia in the 1890s. Eventually in his fifties he  married and had 12 children, 11 who survived into adulthood. He was gone before my parents were courting. His Catholicism infused his children’s lives, and in turn ours. On and on it went, the rosary and trimmings we would say back in the day. Once I was almost sure I saw the statue of Mary move, but perhaps it was just a trick of the light, and all that repetition.

It’s been many decades since I broke free of what felt like a straitjacket of Catholicism. I gradually unshackled myself from the age of fourteen when my sister joined the Rajneeshies. It culminated in me as a 19-year-old, sinking my teeth into a bacon double cheeseburger deluxe on Good Friday. (Catholics will get just how evil that really is).

When still in the early days of having renounced Catholicism, I raged about it all to a nun who used to teach at UWA – Dr Veronica Brady. She blinked at me, owlishly, unperturbed by my energy and blasphemy.

“At least it gave you a system of beliefs to reject,” she said.

These words stayed with me, and over time I’ve softened. Come to believe that having a system of beliefs was helpful in some ways, even though most of it needed to be jettisoned. Especially the denial of the body, plain old misogyny and slut-shaming.

While I’m not keen to take up anything else that considers itself the one and only way, yoga has become a central tool in my mental and emotional wellbeing. During the yoga retreat, it was on my list to buy a mala and dip it in the Ganges, prime it for use when I got home. Saying mantras helps still my monkey mind, even if only for fifteen minutes a day.

The first mala I purchased for about $8 had small beads and was reminiscent of the rosaries of my childhood, but after the tassel fell off I was on the hunt for something more substantial. One of our many interesting outings was a visit to the ashram of the saint Anandamayi Ma. A spry Indian guide took us on a tour through the grounds and ushered us into his gift shop. We pored over his goods for sale, and I settled on a mala with large, seven-faced beads from the Rudrashka tree and a robust tassel. I wondered dimly if there were a few extra zeros in the transaction as I handed over my credit card. Later, back at the hotel I realised I’d spent $150 on my second mala. Oh well, at least I contributed to the refurbishment of the ashram.

The mala was dipped in the Ganges as planned, and I’ve and used it regularly in this first week back home after my adventures. As always, I’ve been reflecting that I guess we’ve got to found what works for us, what keeps us able to show up in this confusing, contradictory and occasionally heart-breaking world.